“A typical person is more than five times as likely to die in an extinction event as in a car crash,” says a new report.Nuclear war. Climate change. Pandemics that kill tens of millions. These are the most viable threats to globally organized civilization. They’re the stuff of nightmares and blockbusters—but unlike sea monsters or zombie viruses, they’re real, part of the calculus that political leaders consider everyday. And according to a new report from the U.K.-based Global Challenges Foundation, they’re much more likely than we might think. In its annual report on “global catastrophic risk,” the nonprofit debuted a...

An international team of scientists has found evidence of a series of massive supernova explosions near our solar system, which showered Earth with radioactive debris. The scientists found radioactive iron-60 in sediment and crust samples taken from the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The iron-60 was concentrated in a period between 3.2 and 1.7 million years ago, which is relatively recent in astronomical terms, said research leader Dr Anton Wallner from The Australian National University (ANU). "We were very surprised that there was debris clearly spread across 1.5 million years," said Dr Wallner, a nuclear physicist in the ANU Research...

The Opening of the Key to the Electric Universe Criticized, ostracized, derided, scorned and rebuked; Cuvier and Schaeffer. These two French eccentric geniuses ranged their new practical paradigms against the sanitized teachings of the Royal Societys consensus science. Georges Cuvier and then later Claude Schaeffer, dared question the hidebound uniformitarian teachings demanded by the Royal Societys geology darlings, Hutton and Lyle. They insisted that the worlds development was a slow evolutionary process explained by millions of years of uniform steady change. This misneme eventually influenced Darwin to explain evolution as a child of slow natural selection that, by chance, produced...

Since joining the Trump campaign as a national spokeswoman in November, Katrina Pierson has served as an attack dog of sorts for Donald Trump, attempting to expose his critics and opponents as faux conservatives who are simply pulling the wool over the eyes of the American people. And yet, Ms. Pierson's own statements reveal she is a self-proclaimed devotee of Malcolm X (whom she has referred to as her "idol") and has a history of attacking conservatives as racists, sneering at Christians who are unable to "handle the truth" and mocking candidates who open up about their faith on the...

Instances of volcanic eruptions are their highest for 300 years and scientists fear a major one that could kill millions and devastate the planet is a real possibility. Experts at the European Science Foundation said volcanoes - especially super-volcanoes like the one at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, which has a caldera measuring 34 by 45 miles (55 by 72 km) - pose more threat to Earth and the survival of humans than asteroids, earthquakes, nuclear war and global warming. There are few real contingency plans in place to deal with the ticking time bomb, which they conclude is likely to...

Since initially reporting on California's Alison Canyon gas leak, more details have emerged on the scale (and potential for no solution) of the problem as the infamous Erin Brockovich writes, "the enormity of the Aliso Canyon gas leak cannot be overstated. Gas is escaping through a ruptured pipe more than 8,000 feet underground, and it shows no signs of stopping," as according to the California Air Resources Board, methane - a greenhouse gas 72 times more impactful in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide - has been escaping from the Aliso Canyon site with force equivalent â€śto a volcanic eruptionâ€ť...

There are two countries that I once regarded as home: Canada, where I have spent most of my life, and Greece, where I lived for five years. Both are now lost to me. Governed by a leftist administration and effectively submitting to the adhan--the call of the muezzin--each is now under siege. Greece has become a way-station for a vast press of Muslim refugees sowing disorder and mayhem in their wake. Fishermen on the island of Lesbos, which I know well, have seen their livelihoods disrupted, and are unable to navigate through the filth and garbage littering their shores. Elsewhere...

Elizabeth Palermo September 15, 2015An artist's depiction of the dual meteor strike. (Don Dixon/Erik Sturkell/University of Gothenburg) It's not altogether uncommon to hear about double rainbows, but what about a double meteor strike? It's a rare event, but researchers in Sweden recently found evidence that two meteors smacked into Earth at the same time, about 458 million years ago. Researchers from the University of Gothenburg uncovered two craters in the county of Jämtland in central Sweden. The meteors that formed the craters landed just a few miles from each other at the same moment, according to Erik Sturkell, a professor...

Fact or Fiction? broken earth cartoon FACT: Earthquakes are sudden rolling or shaking events caused by movement under the Earth’s surface. An earthquake is the ground shaking caused by a sudden slip on a fault. Stresses in the earth's outer layer push the sides of the fault together. Stress builds up and the rocks slip suddenly, releasing energy in waves that travel through the earth's crust and cause the shaking that we feel during an earthquake. Faults are caused by the tectonic plates grinding and scraping against each other as they continuously and slowly move. In California, for example, there...

Admit it, there's nothing more fun than sitting in a dark theatre, munching on a bucket of buttery popcorn, and watching the Earth get demolished. In the latest round of catastrophic flicks, California is destroyed as the famous San Andreas Fault unleashes unimaginable (and unrealistic) devastation across the state. The new film, San Andreas, depicts the rupture of an unknown fault near the Hoover Dam in Nevada, which gets the destructive ball rolling by setting off powerful earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault. And although earthquakes are nothing new to Californians, and pose serious threats along the famous fault, Hollywood...

October 08, 2014 N_Walayat The case of the Spanish nurse contracting Ebola from a Spanish patient flown into Spain from West Africa and going onto infect others as patient zero for the outbreak with more than 50 being monitored, illustrates the myth of competency that surrounds the western public sector health services in that at least for 1/3rd of the time the public health services only tend to go through the motions of providing a health service which whilst most of the time the consequences for lack of consistency in competency is only to the detriment of the patient, however...

I'm surprised that I haven't seen any wargaming thoughts on how Ebola Virus is going to play-out in the US in the coming weeks, months and years. Watching how Duncan was managed in Texas does not give me any confidence that the feds or state health authorities have a clue what to do and are totally disorganized and unprepared. This is surprising given the fact we've had almost 40 years of knowledge of and experience with hemorrhagic viruses from Central Africa including Marburg, Lassa, and Ebola. You'd think that every health agency in the country would have figured out how...

BILLIONAIRE HEDGE FUND MANAGER: Of All The Things That Are Likely, Nothing Is Scarier Than An Electromagnetic Pulse Myles Udland July 30, 2014 Plasmasphere - Wikimedia Commons Hedge fund managers often like to opine on various topics that are largely unrelated to investing. In his latest lengthy quarterly letter to clients, Paul Singer of Elliott Management spent some time discussing a phenomenon that caught our attention and the attention of many others. It's the danger posed by an electromagnetic pulse. Singer writes that an electromagnetic pulse is the "risk that stands way above the rest in terms of the scope...

Recently, rumors have been swelling of a danger at Yellowstone National Park. That danger? A brewing supervolcano eruption. The fear of a Yellowstone supereruption, which ultimately went viral, may have begun back in February when a seismometer called B944 began sending senseless data to a public viewer at the University of Utah's seismographic station, as George Black reports in The New Yorker. Luckily for most of the U.S., the likelihood this eruption would happen is pretty low: about one in 100,000 any given year. If it did happen, it would be pretty devastating, though.

Measuring the size or strength of natural events has always been a challenge for natural scientists. They developed the Richter Magnitude scale to estimate the amount of energy released by an earthquake, the Saffir-Simpson scale to estimate a hurricane's potential, and the Fujita scale for rating the intensity of hurricanes. These scales are valuable for comparing different events and for understanding the amount of damage that events of different size can cause. Measuring the strength of a volcanic eruption is more challenging than collecting wind speed data or measuring ground motion with an instrument. Volcanic eruptions produce different types of...

On Sunday, the worst earthquake in about 30 years rattled the Yellowstone supervolcano. Overall, there have been at least 25 significant earthquakes at Yellowstone National Park since Thursday, but it is the 4.8 earthquake that has many observers extremely worried. Could such a large earthquake be a sign that the Yellowstone supervolcano is starting to roar to life after all this time? And if it does erupt, what would that mean for the rest of the country? As you will see below, a full-blown eruption at Yellowstone would be absolutely catastrophic. It is estimated that such an eruption could dump...

12 Signs That Something Big Is Happening To The Earth’s Crust Under North And South America By Michael Snyder on March 30th, 2014 Why are fault lines and volcanoes all over North and South America suddenly waking up? Are we moving into a time when major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions will become much more common? For the past several decades, we have been extremely fortunate to have experienced a period of extremely low seismic activity along the west coast of the United States. You see, the west coast lies right along the infamous Ring of Fire. Approximately 75 percent of...

A 300-year drought may have caused the demise of several Mediterranean cultures, including ancient Greece, new research suggests. A sharp drop in rainfall may have led to the collapse of several eastern Mediterranean civilizations, including ancient Greece, around 3,200 years ago. The resulting famine and conflict may help explain why the entire Hittite culture, chariot-riding people who ruled most of the region of Anatolia, vanished from the planet, according to a study published in August in the journal PLOS ONE. Lost golden period Even during the heyday of Classical Greek civilization, there were hints of an earlier culture that was...

The US Treasury said Wednesday the government's massive response to the economic crisis five years ago paid off, avoiding a catastrophic breakdown of the financial system. In a report marking the anniversary of the bankruptcy of investment bank Lehman Brothers -- which snowballed into the worst crisis since the 1930s -- the Treasury defended deploying hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to save other banks, major financial institutions and auto companies. The downside is a government deficit that rocketed to $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2009 and continued to top $1 trillion until this year. That sent government debt to the...

(Reuters) - It seems that everyone in Washington is talking about it except President Barack Obama: When Congress votes on the administration's request to use military force in Syria, the future of his presidency could well be on the line. A defeat, a distinct possibility, would hobble Obama in affairs both foreign and domestic, particularly if fellow Democrats collaborate in it. It will hurt him at a critical juncture, as he confronts not only Syria, but the nuclear activities of Iran and North Korea, another round of battles with Republicans over fiscal issues, an immigration bill, and a possibly difficult...

A recent study has found that global warming is causing apples to lose some of their crunch. The study which was published on Scientific Reports, analysed data gathered from 1970 to 2010 at two orchards in Japan and ...

Jan's guests are a rep from the Zionist Organization of America, Joseph Sabag, and friend of Israel, Bob Naegele. Anti-Semitism is raging in the world and particularly on U.S. college campuses. It says in Psalms 102 that when the Lord builds up Zion, He shall appear in His glory. Thus, Christians need to be paying attention but most aren't. Nor are pulpits in the Western world. As last days' events play out, Israel is almost always in the center of them. The three have a lively discussion about many issues, including why Jews are usually supportive of liberal candidates who...

New Fossil Book Won't Showcase Obvious Catastrophe by Brian Thomas, M.S. * Not just horses and fish, but—like a whole ancient zoo buried together—lizards, alligators, stingrays, snakes, squirrel varieties, bats, long-tailed turtles, lemur-like primates, birds, frogs, insects, and sycamore, palm, and fern leaves were all fossilized in Wyoming's Green River Formation. A new book showcasing some of the more spectacular fossils provides secularists another opportunity to reinforce their ideas about how these diverse creatures were encased in what became a giant rock formation. Commonsense observations refute their slow-and-gradual scenario, however, and point to a more violent explanation. Lance Grande collected...

Survey reveals stunning attitudes about surviving in catastrophe Editor’s note: This is another in a series of “WND/WENZEL POLLS” conducted exclusively for WND by the public-opinion research and media consulting company Wenzel Strategies. Nearly half of Americans would expect serious, sustained life-threatening civil unrest within two weeks of a major catastrophe, such as an EMP attack that would destroy electronics, according to a new poll. Another huge percentage say they would expect further deterioration after two weeks, but for many, that development would be irrelevant, because they expect they would be dead by then. The sobering the new poll by...

Government Issues Statement Debunking End of the World: Â“Just RumorsÂ” Mac Slavo December 4th, 2012 With the purported 2012 Mayan Apocalypse calculated to take place on December 21st rapidly approaching, thousands of letters have poured into government agencies like NASA from citizens concerned about the end of the world. Doomsday fears surrounding the end of the Mayan calendar, a possible collision with a mystery Â“Planet XÂ” theorized by some researchers, and pole shift popularized in the Hollywood movie 2012, have forced the government to issue a rebuttal debunking the claims at their USA.gov web site: Scary Rumors about the World...

The head of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has called on Arab forces to confront Israel and for the international community to pressure the “Zionist government to withdraw from the land of Palestine.” The statement – the existence of which was revealed Wednesday by the Investigative Project on Terrorism blog – reminds Brotherhood followers of the movement’s decades-long “sacrifices” in efforts to destroy the Jewish state. “On this day, like every year, the Arab and Islamic nations remember the worst catastrophe ever to befall the peoples of the world,” Badie wrote in the text, translated by The Jerusalem Post. “We demand the

CLEAR POWER PLANTS: The Very Real Possibility Of A Global Nuclear Catastrophe Politics / Nuclear Power Mar 26, 2012 - 01:59 AM By: Washingtons Blog The Government Spends Trillions On Unlikely Threats … But Won’t Spend a Billion Dollars to Prevent the Very Real Possibility of Global Nuclear Catastrophe We’re Spending Money Combating the Wrong Dangers Studies show that people are worry about the wrong things. We are terrified of things that will probably never happen, and underestimate the real dangers which face us. As we noted last year, the extreme vulnerability of nuclear power plants to solar flares is...

A Greek default and traumatic ejection from the euro moved a step closer last night after eurozone finance ministers cancelled a crucial meeting, accusing Athens of failing to flesh out austerity cuts. The escalating brinkmanship came as fresh data showed that Greece's economy contracted by 6.8pc last year and at an accelerating 7pc rate in the last quarter, far worse than expected by the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) "troika". The country appears to be in a self-feeding downward spiral that is playing havoc with budget targets, leaving Greece with a...

Newt says that with the way the Fed is printing money, Romney’s proposal for an automatic minimum wage increase based on inflation could be potentially catastrophic. Newt remembers the Carter years and how inflation was rampant by 1980, setting the nation toward collapse. He says with the Fed printing so much money, inflation could potentially soar if the economy begins to recover which could send minimum wage soaring with it:

With a debt ceiling agreement finally in place and the Senate on track to approve it today congratulations are being handed out all around. Armageddon and catastrophe has supposedly been averted. And politicians are rushing to put the best face on the deal. Unfortunately, the new agreement does not accomplish as much as many had hoped, or as much as it should have, in terms of curbing spending and continued deficits. This explains why stock markets continued to fall despite the supposedly "good" news. The reason is because, once again, politicians are continuing to push the problem to the future. ...

Obama has just given an eager world his fantasy answer for the last sixty years of Arab-Israel conflict. The Great One's long-awaited solution is for Israel to pull back to the cease-fire lines of the 1948 War of Independence, or what Obama, in a moment of historical amnesia, calls "the 1967 borders." People have fought and died over those borders since 1949, not 1967. Make that sixty years of regular warfare. Take a quick glance at the Green Line on the map, and see if you can honestly answer this question: "Would I want my family and children to live...

GENEVA (AP) -- A senior official at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says solar storms pose a growing threat to criticial infrastructure such as satellite communications, navigation systems and electrical transmission equipment. NOAA Assistant Secretary Kathryn Sullivan says the intensity of solar storms is expected to peak in 2013 and countries should prepare for "potentially devastating effects." Solar storms release particles that can temporarily disable or permanently destroy fragile computer circuits. Sullivan, a former NASA astronaut who in 1984 became the first woman to walk in space, told a U.N. weather conference in Geneva on Tuesday that "it...

Troubling Global Volcanic Activity On The Rise By Alan CarubaNovember 3, 2010 3 Nov 10 - The news is all about the Tuesday’s U.S. elections, but some of us are concerned about the news on Monday regarding a possible eruption of the Grimsvotn volcano in Iceland. Never heard of it? You will. Grimsvotn is the most active volcano in Iceland. The one that made a lot of news earlier in 2010 was Eyjafjallajokull that, while relatively small, generated such a huge cloud of ash that it disrupted air travel across western and northern Europe for six days in April. Here’s...

Want to know what would happen if a 10km-wide asteroid came out of the sky and slammed down on your city? Scientists at Purdue University and Imperial College London have updated their popular impact effects calculator first produced in 2004. Users dial in details about the hypothetical impactor, like its diameter and density. The web program then estimates the scale of the ensuing disaster, such as the size of the crater left behind. It will also tell you how far away you need to be to avoid being buried by all the material thrown out by the blast, or set...

Barring a huge upset, Republicans will take control of at least one house of Congress next week. How worried should we be by that prospect? Not very, say some pundits. After all, the last time Republicans controlled Congress while a Democrat lived in the White House was the period from the beginning of 1995 to the end of 2000. And people remember that era as a good time, a time of rapid job creation and responsible budgets. Can we hope for a similar experience now? No, we can’t. This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably...

"As thou hast done to Israel, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head." ~ Obadiah 1:15 The Great New England Hurricane of September 1938 and Nazism. The Oct. 30, 1991 Madrid Peace Process and Hurricane Andrew of 1992. Massive historic floods in Iowa as Secy of State Condi Rice insisted Jerusalem be separated. America pressures Israel for peace in the region by relinquishing land and, within 24 hours, America is hit with catastrophe. Coincidence? John McTernan doesn't think so. McTernan, a staunch defender of Israel in light of biblical prophecy, has spent a...

Tiny balls of fungus and feces may disprove the theory that a huge space rock exploded over North America about 12,900 years ago, triggering a thousand-year cold snap, according to a new study. The ancient temperature drop, called the Younger Dryas, has been well documented in the geologic record, including soil and ice core samples.The cool-down also coincides with the extinction of mammoths and other Ice Age mammals in North America, and it's thought to have spurred our hunter-gatherer ancestors in the Middle East to adopt an agricultural lifestyle.But the theory that a comet or asteroid explosion is behind the...

In the days since the BP oil spill began, the failure to stop the leak has caused incredible anger and frustration -- especially for the people of the Gulf Coast struggling to survive one of the worst environmental disasters in our nation's history. This leak is an unprecedented catastrophe and a technical challenge unlike any we've ever seen. We are pressing for every possible remedy to keep oil from flowing into the Gulf, and to capture as much as we can while relief wells are drilled that will permanently stop the leak. We are relying on a team of scientists...

Introduction The following is just my opinion. It is nothing more than my opinion. I have nothing to substantiate or prove any aspect of my opinion. My opinion is simply the logical conclusion of a law-abiding sixty-year old Christian grandfather who has both an engineering degree and an M.B.A. degree and who has seen both good times and hard times during his life. The Current Situation: At the present time every nation in the entire world is facing serious financial and social stress. If only a few nations were involved then it might be possible to contain the upcoming meltdown...

Efforts to contain the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill will reach a crucial moment today, when engineers for BP hope to learn if a high-risk attempt to plug the leaking oil well with heavy mud has been successful. BP executives expressed cautious optimism over the attempted "top kill", which involves pumping thousands of gallons of mud and chemicals into the ruptured Macondo exploration well. However, BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, said it would be 24 hours before engineers would know if the operation, which started at 1pm (1800 GMT) last night, would work. snip BP's latest attempt to control...

GRAND ISLE, La. -- Waves of heavy crude oil pushed ashore at barrier islands in southern Louisiana on Saturday, ruining some of this state's only beaches and, more importantly, threatening the fragile ecosystem of Louisiana's wetlands. Workers in knee-high rubber boots and hard hats shoveled polluted black sand and gobs of oil into plastic bags on the beaches of Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge near Grand Isle, La., while the Louisiana National Guard raced to finish the construction of barriers made of sand and rock to protect miles of marshes. Meanwhile, residents lashed out at public officials and BP representatives at...

BP admits higher leak rate: 2010 Gulf oil spill now 20 times worse then Exxon Valdez British Petroleum has now admitted that the amount of oil being spilled has actually been much higher than previously reported. According to an MSBNC report today, estimates of the total amount of oil spilled so far is 20 times more than the 10.8 million gallons spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster in March 1989. Right now, the spill is roughly the size of Pennsylvania. That represents one-fifth of the entire amount of water within US borders. snip This is - without question - the...

Marine scientists were carefully viewing footage of oil and gas billowing out of a ruptured well on the ocean floor today, to try to deliver the first reliable estimates of the crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico – it could be as much as 70,000 barrels a day. snip Independent marine researchers have suggested the spill could be much larger. snip Its analysis was conducted by Steve Werely, an associate professor at Purdue University, using a technique called particle image velocimetry, a method was accurate to 20%. That puts the range of the oil spill from 56,000 to 84,000...

BP engineers tried to activate a huge piece of underwater safety equipment but failed because the device had been so altered that diagrams BP got from the equipment's owner didn't match the supposedly failsafe device's configuration The oil well also failed at least one critical pressure test on the day that gas surged up the drill pipe and set the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig aflame, killing 11 and setting off a spill that has spewed 210,000 gallons of crude into the gulf every day for three weeks, according to BP documents provided to congressional investigators. Who ordered the alterations in...

A focus of the Senate hearing into the Deepwater Horizon disaster was why the final step in the cementing process—putting a cement plug in the well more than a mile below the sea surface—wasn't performed. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that rig officials had taken the unusual step of postponing the installation of the plug while they removed heavy fluid that serves to keep oil and natural gas from surging up through the well pipe. Usually, the plug is set into place below the heavy fluid, or mud, which isn't removed until after the cement hardens. But experts at...

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – Concern grew Sunday that the US Gulf coast is facing a whole new level of environmental disaster after the best short-term fix for a massive oil spill ran into serious trouble. BP's giant containment box lay idle on the seabed as engineers furiously tried to figure out how to stop it clogging with ice crystals. The British energy giant, which owns the lion's share of the leaking oil and has accepted responsibility for the clean-up, has tried to banish the notion that the dome is a "silver bullet" to end the crisis. But should efforts...

A fire broke out at the Guinness factory in Dublin shortly after noon local time. Over nine fire brigades and three rigs with aerial ladder platforms were able to contain the blaze before it spread to the ammonia plant at the site. An official from Guinness was able to confirm that no one was hurt in the incident. “There were no injuries to any personnel and the fire has been extinguished,” the spokeswoman said. “An internal investigation is under way to find out exactly what the cause of the accident was.” The fire broke out near the Victoria Quay entry...

Feb. 4, 2009 -- An ancient killer is hiding in the remote forests of Siberia. Walled off from western eyes during the Soviet era and forgotten among the endless expanse of wilderness, scientists are starting to uncover the remnants of a supervolcano that rained Hell on Earth 250 million years ago and killed 90 percent of all life. Researchers have known about the volcano -- the Siberian Traps, for years. And they've speculated that the volcanic rocks, which cover an area about the size of Alaska, played a role in runaway global warming that led to the end -- Permian...

Until recently, this political epitaph might have been written for Dick Morris: An amoral, but brilliant consultant, strategist, and analyst -- the man who kept Bill Clinton in, and Hillary Clinton out, of the White House. By selling the strategy of triangulation to Bill Clinton, Morris successfully neutered the Gingrich revolution of 1994. But he also neutered the worst political impulses of Bill Clinton (Morris couldn't do anything about the sexual ones) and forced Clinton to work with the Republican congress to balance budgets and reform welfare. But Dick Morris is doing his best work now in his crusade against...

The giant deer, also known as the giant Irish deer or Irish elk, is one of the largest deer species that ever lived. Yet why this giant animal, which had massive antlers spanning 3.6m, suddenly went extinct some 10,600 years ago has remained a mystery. Now a study of its teeth is producing tantalising answers, suggesting the deer couldn't cope with climate change. As conditions became colder and drier in Ireland at the time, fewer plants grew, gradually starving the deer. The discovery is published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. The giant deer (Megaloceros giganteus) has become famous over...